The training room under the Palace was dimly lit. The padded walls and floor disappeared around circles of light. The training was meant to assist the students with transitions.
The great city of Dadu was surrounded by a torus-shaped shield for protection against the elements. The old city was the only part left exposed, and it was visited daily as an eternal memory of what was lost. Those with the stomach could look upon the Emperor.
RuTing was Guannei, unaffected by The Peace, and had no difficulty looking upon the machine made into the image of a man. She felt disgusted but could contain her feelings.
As she did while training her students. She dismissed her emotions and listened to her heart. She slowed the steady beat, finding inner peace not imposed by the virus that stilled humankind. The purpose of the Guannei was to serve the People. They did so by guarding the Emperor and obeying the Premier. Her mind and body were his to command. His command was for her to teach, so she taught.
She activated her Shadow Cloak, disappearing into the darkness. Her students stumbled around the room, trying to find her. The Guannei were not numerous, and her class was only six. They were young men and women training since childhood to be the perfect servants—unseen but prepared, anticipating, and effortless.
Her perfection was in doubt. She could see the difference when she trained with her peers. Training students was an honor, but she thought this task was given to her as a consolation.
She ghosted behind a student as he went from light to shadow. The students were working together to find her. They created a search pattern, but he moved too quickly. He was overconfident. His eyes had not adjusted to the dark. He was twice her size, but with a kick to the back of his knee, she pulled him hard to the ground, knocking all the wind out of his lungs.
While the other students converged on him, she stepped behind, dispatching them one at a time.
When she was finished, she deactivated her Shadow Clock and turned on the lights.
“Where did you fail?” she asked.
“You had your Shadow Cloak turned on,” he protested.
“Did I?” RuTing asked.
The Guannei were trained in honesty unless commanded by the Premier to lie. Training with the Shadow Cloak was very similar to lying. Using the Shadow Cloak was lying about your presence.
Her students stumbled over their tongues much like they stumbled in the dark. They could not see her with the Shadow Clock turned on. They did not know how to communicate their suspicions.
“To use the Shadow Cloak, you must not be,” RuTing said. “The Cloak is only fabric. If the person inside does not disappear, the fabric will not protect you.” She turned the lights down until the pools of light on the training mat were all that was left to provide a sense of direction. “Activate your Shadow Cloaks.”
Her students disappeared, but their stealth was far from perfect. She didn’t close her eyes. If her brother did this training, he would have had the students blindfold him. If he was being especially mean, he would have them tie one of his arms to his leg. She moved quickly, using the light to telegraph her intentions. The Cloak blinded, but it did not hide the sound of feet on the floor. It did not hide the smell of sweat or the faint obstruction of a body between the vent.
With swift blows, she deactivated each of their Shadow Cloaks and carefully removed the battery packs they’d buckled on with pride. Earning a Shadow Cloak was a penultimate accomplishment before being recognized as Guannei. She took it away from them so they would realize they could never stop learning.
After they mastered the Cloak, they would earn their swords.
When they stood again decloaked and crestfallen, she turned on the lights and let them retrieve their battery packs. She dismissed her students and they exited into the corridor.
There were no doors to the training room. It was used by all Guannei. The lighting was flexible. It could simulate morning or evening and was large enough to accommodate a rising routine for all the Guannei that lived under the Palace.
Before she turned to go, she felt a tap on her shoulder, and her brother appeared. She pulled her punch. It would have caught him in the face if he’d stayed still. There was little chance of that, but she didn’t risk it. A broken nose wouldn’t help her family, the Guannei, or the People. This time.
“Jianwei!” she said exasperated. “Don’t sneak up on me.”
“I thought you were teaching stealth,” he said. He tilted his head as if puzzled. He was playing innocent.
“You know what you’re doing,” she replied. She was the younger sister, and despite the strict rules of the Guannei, he was often easy on her, and she knew it. He punished her later with subtle mocking and jabs. The Guannei didn’t have families the same way as the rest of the population. Their choices had to be approved by the Premier. No one had children without help. It was very rare for natural conception to fertilize a seed and even more rare for the seed to be brought to term. What they lacked in choice, they made up for in close sibling relationships. Her parents were proud, but unlike the People, they were together from duty.
Stolen from Royal Road, this story should be reported if encountered on Amazon.
“Hanlei wants to see you,” Jianwei said quietly. His tone indicated the time for mockery was over. She would have frowned, but she repressed even the barest hint. Part of Guannei training was suppressing emotional expressions. Not that they weren’t felt, but they needed to be kept on the inside. Rarely was anyone summoned to Hanlei. There were so few Guannei he would appear if he had a question. “It is important.”
Jianwei’s tone held a measure of sternness. Apparently, her fraction of a frown hadn’t gone unnoticed.
“Very well.”
She would have to do better. She followed her brother, although she knew the corridors under the palace as well as he did. She had dismissed her students on schedule, and between training regimes, there was more activity in the corridors and more gossip.
Jianwei was a step ahead of her, as was proper. They followed the same cultural patterns as the people who served in the light in the palace above. It was an old custom.
That meant he was the first to hear the gossip. Not all Guannei had siblings. If the parents had success, it was encouraged. Where there weren’t siblings, they paired quickly, although Jianwei was an exception. He stayed alone. What RuTing thought of as one of the few freedoms of the Guannei, he thought of as immorality.
In the corridors, slights were passed quickly, and RuTing smelled her arch-rival, Fenfang, somewhere in front of her.
Fenfang couldn’t have taught stealth. She doused herself in fragrance. RuTing redied a pithy statement in passing, but she sneezed, missing the opportunity.
“Does her best work on her back,” Fenfang whispered. Her voice was just loud enough for Jianwei and RuTing.
Her brother’s fists clenched. He was usually in control, and Ruting expected him to stop and challenge Fenfang or let her do it, but instead of stopping, he grabbed her elbow and pressed forward.
The corridor cleared when they reached Hanlei’s study. The desk in his study was always overflowing with papers. The history of Guannei wasn’t trusted to digital records. It was bound into books. Some histories were even in scroll form for ceremonial purposes—gifted and passed to families.
Hanlei was not alone. Nor was he sitting behind his wooden desk, still stained and scarred from the firing of the city hundreds of years ago.
He stood with the Premier. No wonder Jianwei didn’t stop. He’d waited only until her session was over.
She bowed immediately, in time with her brother.
“I am here to serve,” she said, not waiting for an acknowledgment. It was obvious they were waiting for her.
“She is small,” the Premier said.
RuTing kept the surprise from her eyes much more effectively. The Premier looked at her like she was a piece of meat, barely human. The Guannei were different, but they were still human.
“She is healthy,” Hanlei said. “After the procedure, the children will be raised as Guannei.”
“He insists they be married in the Western style.”
“You are selling my sister to the West?” Jianwei said. There was no mistaking his anger. So much for containing emotions. RuTing wasn’t sure if her emotions were contained or if she was in shock. The Premier had to approve procreation, but the personal lives of the Guannei were their own so long as they were in service to the People.
“Do you serve the People?” the Premier asked her.
“I am Guannei.” There could be no other answer.
“The Westerners don’t want privileges to her body,” Hanlei said to Jianwei, “but they require the children to be legitimized in the Union. Like all children, the seed will be fertilized and implanted in Dadu. If necessary, we can use an incubation chamber.”
Jianwei nodded. His agreement made her doubtful as if he understood more about what was happening than she did.
“This is a marriage between East and West,” the Premier said. “We will solidify bloodlines with resistance to The Peace.”
“For Dadu,” Hanlei said. “You will marry a Western Merchant Lord and provide us many children.”
They said they weren’t selling her body, but that is exactly what it sounded like. The only problem was they didn't plan for her to conceive naturally.
Not once, but twice.
She was north of Dill, hunting in the largest contiguous forest on Critos, when the wind kicked up, and she smelled a scent that returned a distant memory. RuTing often hunted alone. Her husband had hunting lodges in isolated Union lands across the West. They didn't visit all of them; they were inherited, but she favored this one. The heat was a closer parallel to Dadu, although Dill was more humid. Every place had its own sounds and smells.
Dadu was busy, an economic powerhouse built on dry bones of the past, while Dill was musty, like old books.
She hunted alone today, which was unusual in itself as she often brought her daughter to train her in lessons she learned in the Guannei. The past was forgotten, but the lessons weren’t. Her plasma rifle was an old model, equipped with an AI with a saucy tongue to ensure every shot was legal. It wouldn’t fire on a person. She’d only taken it because hers was broken. She’d left her daughter back at the cabin for the same reason.
Coincidence had favored her. That didn’t mean the situation wasn’t hopeless, but the Guannei taught her hope wasn’t essential for service.
She raised the viewfinder to her face and spun, hoping the gun might penetrate the Shadow Cloak.
“On your left,” the gun said.
She fired. The fiery bolt of plasma burned a line in her retina as it disappeared into the trees. There was a muffled sound of something falling. They were already too close.
She spun again, but the invisible shapes had already closed the distance. A flying kick connected to her plasma rifle sending the gun flying into the bushes. Another connected to her back. She felt the vertebrae crack as she was bent nearly in half.
Darkness closed on her before she hit the ground, but the darkness was not complete. She woke in fits as spikes of pain like electrical shocks shot up her back, and she knew she was being moved.
She didn’t regain consciousness until a hand slapped her face over and over again.
“You betrayed the People,” Hanlei said. She turned her head enough to see that he held her over a warren. The rabbits were buried in their holes, but as soon as they detected humans, they would rise.
All animals hated people. The first one that saw her would scream, summoning the entire colony. They would jump on her with their tiny incisors cutting out gobbets of flesh until there was nothing left. A colony could have hundreds or thousands of rabbits, and they would chase her for miles, not that she could run with her back broken.
“The People need The Peace,” RuTing said. “It’s not for you to control.”
“You killed Fenfang,” Hanlei said.
“No amount of soap could wash off that much scent.”
He tossed her into the warren, disappearing inside his Shadow Cloak. She fell hard, going unconscious from the pain. That was a small mercy as the pinpricks like needles spread across her body.
